Elevator advertising gives brands a unique opportunity to capture consumers' attention across the customer journey, from awareness to conversion — as long as your media and message match.
January 21, 2021
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For consumers who live in a high-rise apartment or condo building, taking the elevator is part of their daily routine. It's their first stop on their way out the door and their last before turning in for the night.
Elevator advertising offers advertisers a unique opportunity to get in front of a captive audience of those consumers, whether they've never heard of your brand or are on the brink of making a purchase. It's a powerful new form of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising — and DOOH is predicted to make up 38.3% of all OOH advertising by 2023.
In this article, we'll cover how brands can use elevator advertising to capture their audience's attention throughout the customer journey. But first, what exactly is the customer journey?
The customer journey refers to the entire experience a customer has with your brand, from the very first interaction to becoming a loyal brand advocate.
Knowing your customer journey can help you create the best customer experience possible at every touchpoint — but research by Econsultancy found that a whopping 50% of organizations have little to no understanding of their customer journey.
To better understand the customer journey, many marketers visualize it as a marketing or sales funnel. The marketing funnel routes a customer from the first time they learn about your brand to when they complete a purchase.
This is where that AIDA model comes in:
The AIDA model represents the four stages of the marketing funnel: Awareness, interest, desire, and action.
Mapping out the customer journey can have a real, positive impact on a brand's growth. One study found that companies with formal customer journey programs see the following year over year:
So, what does all this have to do with elevator advertising?
Once you map out your customer journey, you can adapt the ad creative in your elevator ad placements to target customers depending on where they are in the marketing funnel. In turn, this creates a better customer experience and makes potential customers more likely to convert. Keep reading to learn how.
With elevator advertising, advertisers can change out the messaging and creative more easily than nearly any other type of out-of-home ad. Tailoring your ads for each step of the customer funnel can help you drive the consumer from one stage to the next — and at the bottom of the funnel, that means driving sales, too.
At the awareness level, elevator advertising is a great way to get your brand in front of a new audience and grab their attention.
Unlike other forms of OOH advertising, which might compete with one another in a busy city square or along the highway, elevator ads can help catch the eye of hard-to-reach consumers. These ads are a simple and effective opportunity to introduce your brand to a captive audience.
And seeing as it takes an average of seven views for your brand to be remembered, elevator ads can help make your brand top-of-mind for elevator riders over just a few days.
By the time you reach the interest stage, you've ideally begun to build some general recognition in your audience.
Your ads should serve your audience useful and interesting information and begin to earn your audience's trust.
Show that you truly understand your audience by addressing their needs and pain-points head-on. One way to do this is to make sure you speak to your audience when they’re feeling most comfortable. And, their residential elevator is a great place to start.
One of the best things about elevator ads is that they’re part of a resident’s natural environment, with many people using the elevator to travel to and from their home each day. The ad space in these residential elevators is a spot where important updates are shared. For instance, the elevator is used as a spot to share building notices and let residents know about important news like maintenance issues.
Because of this, we know that residents pay attention to what’s on the screen in their building’s elevator. Meaning, it’s a great opportunity to spark interest in your brand in a non-intrusive way.
Now is the time to convince your audience that your product or service can and will solve their pain points and improve their lives.
We know that many people make decisions at home or at work because this is where they feel most comfortable and have access to all the information they need. Because of COVID-19 changing the way we work, the line between work and home has become somewhat blurred. This gives advertisers a unique opportunity to influence decision making by targeting ads based on timing and location. For instance, when people come home from work, or finish up working from home, it’s inevitable that they’ll start to think about their dinner plans. It’s at this point that restaurants offering delivery should be showing their ad in residential elevators.
Alongside ads for your brand, you can also show short excerpts from customer reviews. Your audience may recognize someone just like themselves in those reviews, which can help eliminate any pre-purchase worries.
In turn, that'll help move them towards the next stage in the funnel — and the final part of the AIDA model.
At the action stage of the funnel, you're addressing a warmed up lead, so it's time to deliver a more straightforward pitch that makes them decide to buy your product, visit your store, or whatever else "conversion" means to your business and marketing goals.
One great way to make that hard sell is by offering an exclusive, limited-time offer. In elevator advertising, that could mean sharing a simple-to-remember discount code, or even just saying, "Mention this ad when you come into our store for a free cup of coffee with purchase."
This stage is all about action, so no matter what you choose for your message, make sure you make it as easy as possible for prospects to take that final step over the line from potential customer to actual customer.
Overall, at-home elevator advertising offers an exciting opportunity for businesses to engage audiences throughout the customer journey, from their first interaction with a brand 'til they convert and even beyond.
If you're interested in leveraging the power of elevator advertising to engage more customers across the marketing funnel, Vertical Impression offers advertisers digital ad placements through a network of elevator screens across Canada.
Our platform was built to deliver truly exceptional digital out-of-home ads. Vertical Impressions uses AI and machine learning to target the right customers at the right time — without being intrusive.
Get started with Vertical Impression and start creating more effective touchpoints across the customer journey.
